


It Takes and It Takes and It Takes

by Vive_la_republique



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 07:53:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6365575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vive_la_republique/pseuds/Vive_la_republique





	It Takes and It Takes and It Takes

LOVE DOESN'T DISCRIMINATE...

Grantaire is in love. Hopelessly, terribly, irredeemably in love. It's just his luck he still is very much in love the day before they all die. 

He watches Enjolras from his wine-induced haze at the back of the room. The other man stands in front of a table, dramatically gesticulating as he delivers an inspiring speech to the others, the real members of the ABC. Something about LaMarque's death, about the revolution being at hand. Grantaire doesn't care. It's not what he's saying that matters. It's the passion. 

Enjolras glows. 

His hair glints like burnished gold, his eyes are the color of sapphires, he has the profile of a marble statue, but it's the emotion and the passion and the pure beauty that fills him that made Grantaire the unbeliever fall in love in the first place. 

He's tried to fool himself into thinking they might have had a chance, that the other man might love him as well, but who is he kidding? Not only is Grantaire homely and obnoxious, Enjolras's entire heart is taken up by his love for the cause. For his precious Patria. Grantaire has never hated his country more. 

BETWEEN THE SINNERS AND THE SAINTS...

Grantaire is completely unworthy of Enjolras. Enjolras barely glances at him, let alone says a word to him without prompting. So the only thing Grantaire can do is antagonize him and hope for a glance, a glare, a word to acknowledge that he exists. 

Usually, this would be his time to enter with a snort or a sarcastic comment, to start an argument just to be noticed, just to watch Enjolras's passion spill over in the form of wrath. That's what their relationship is, and that's what it always has been. Arguments and yelling and anger. Cold stares and insults and narrowed eyes. 

Grantaire should get over it. He's a cynic for a reason. He doesn't believe in love, doesn't believe in people, hardly believes in life if he's really forced to consider it. But he hopes and he waits and he antagonizes, just for a glimpse of that passion that he adores so much. 

But not tonight. Not the night before they all throw their lives away on a fruitless mission. Not the night before Death claims them as it claimed countless others on countless other barricades in countless other revolutions. Not the night before he will fade into the patchwork of history like so many others, like all his friends, like Enjolras himself. 

Not the night before everything Grantaire has to live for disappears. 

IT TAKES AND IT TAKES AND IT TAKES...

All love has ever done to Grantaire is take and take and take. He loved his parents, just to be rejected as a drunkard and a fool. He loved his sister Eloïse, just to watch her die of tuberculosis at the age of 8. He loved, no, he LOVES Enjolras, but he'll be dead by moonlight tomorrow, and what will Grantaire have to live for? 

Nothing.

He could live, he supposes. It's not like Enjolras has given anything to him before. He's survived this long on looks from his god, harsh words, maybe a few quick touches here and there, although it's quite possible he's made those up in a drunken spell. 

But he knows in his heart he will not live. If Enjolras dies, he'll go down with him. It's his duty, his right, the only course of action he can see himself taking. 

Without Enjolras, he is nothing. With him, he is everything. 

That night, he drinks more than usual. He raises his glass to his friends, to the stars, to life, to death. To Enjolras. And he accepts his fate then and there. 

He sleeps through the battle for the next day and a half. Useless, he cannot stand to sit by and watch his friends get killed. So he chooses to sit by and sleep, sleep in the hopes that a bullet will catch him unawares and he won't even have to wake up. 

BUT WE KEEP LOVING ANYWAY...

When he does wake up, it's dead silent. He pushes himself to a sitting position and stares. For there, pressed up against the wall with twelve bayonets pointed to his heart, is Enjolras. His coat is in tatters, his skin is glistening with sweat, he's covered in blood and gore and pain, but he's the most beautiful thing Grantaire has ever seen. 

And he remembers his promise. Enjolras will not die alone. Grantaire will go down with him. Orestes and Pylades united at last. 

"Vive la République!" He calls. "I am one of them!" The shock in Enjolras's face would make him laugh if the situation wasn't so dire. 

He takes his place by the leader's side, nervous for a moment. Will Enjolras allow the cynic to stand with him? "Permets-tu?" He asks, and it's more of a plea than a question. Enjolras smiles, and takes his hand.

Their fingers interlock, and it is bliss. 

The soldiers fire, but Grantaire can hardly hear it. 

"You are incapable of believing, thinking, living, or dying," the leader had once told Grantaire, and he had only laughed. This is his chance, his only chance, his final chance, to prove Enjolras wrong. Enjolras had told him he believed in nothing, but that was never true. 

Apollo, he thinks. Enjolras. I believe in you.


End file.
